The invention describes a worm gear drive mechanism with a worm gear and a worm shaft.
It is known to use such worm gear mechanisms to displace different mechanical devices.
In particular, such worm gear mechanisms are used in solar thermal power installations to displace the mirrors which deflect the sunlight onto a heat exchanger.
In order to achieve a maximum light yield at any time, it is desirable here to achieve high precision for the adjustment of the mirrors, for which reason there is often the requirement to equip the worm gear mechanism with a small circumferential backlash.
Here, the circumferential backlash can be characterized as backlash between the tooth flanks of the worm gear mechanism.
For this purpose, it has previously been usual in the prior art to pair the worm gear and the worm shaft on the basis of the identified fabrication tolerances such that the result is a small circumferential backlash.
However, this has the disadvantage that a large number of worm gears and worm shafts have to be kept in stock in order to permit a best selection of the parts to be paired.
In order to reduce the circumferential backlash, it is likewise known in the prior art to provide specific tooth geometries for the worm shaft and/or the worm gear, for example duplex toothing. However, this is considerably more expensive in production.